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Republican National Convention JPA • Page 2 The JPA does not place liability with one party. Rather, the JPA states that each party "will be responsible for its own acts and/or omissions and those of its officials, employees, representative and agents in carrying out the terms of this Agreement... and shall not be responsible for the acts and/or omissions of the other party." See Section 14.1. While it may sometimes seem appropriate to make parties responsible for their own acts or omissions, and city contracts do sometimes contain such provisions, it can greatly complicate the defense of a lawsuit by creating conflict and litigation between the parties and requiring multiple defense attorneys. Thus, a city should consider the potential burdens of defending a lawsuit if it gets sued over conduct that happens pursuant to the JPA. For example, let's assume a police officer from City A injures a protestor. The protestor sues City A alleging the officer from City A was negligent. The protestor also sues City B because the officer from City A was under the command of an officer from City B at the time of the incident. The protestor also sues City C alleging City C did not properly train the officer from City A. So who is responsible? It's hard to tell. Each city will have its own attorney and there will be a lot of finger pointing among the defendants which will probably strengthen the protestor's case. If liability had been placed on one party, the internal disputes would have been removed and one attorney could have been assigned to represent all three cities. A city should also consider the type of services that its police officers will be asked to provide during the RNC. Some services may be deemed to create a lower risk of liability. Of course, there is no way to predict what actions may lead to claims. St. Paul officials have stated that the perceived higher risk activities to be performed by rapid response teams under the JPA will be mostly performed by non-LMCIT members. There are a couple other provisions of the JPA that cities may wish to specifically review and consider: Workers' Compensation. The parties to the agreement are responsible for injuries or death to their own employees and agree to waive claims against the other city. See Section 11.2. Accordingly, a city executing the JPA cannot bring a claim against St. Paul and St. Paul cannot bring a claim against the other city. This is the manner LMCIT recommends handling workers' compensation. Since each city pays for the workers' compensation coverage of its own employees, it makes sense that a city should be responsible for injuries to its own employees. This also helps to eliminate conflicts between governmental entities. The JPA, however, is only an agreement with St. Paul. Thus, a city entering into the agreement would not be precluded from bringing a claim against a third governmental entity that injured a city's police officer. Accordingly, there is some risk that a city entering into the agreement could be faced with defending a claim that the city's police officer injured an officer from a governmental entity other than St. Paul.